All good, then, just so long as you eat eleven - count them, eleven slices - of bread each day. As we all do.

As people have pointed out, folate acid doesn't just come from bread. And I presume even if you don't eat the recommended amount, you still get some benefit.

That press release from the Coalition of Parents of Children with Spina Bifida seems to me tells a side to the story that should be getting a lot more coverage than some head baker.

I'd like to see a baker on the news saying "yes, I'd love to help find a way that I can improve the health of future children and prevent families from having to go through this." There must be some who feel that way about it surely?

Instead I got "some loaves will have to much, some loaves will have too little". Which seemed to me to be irrelevant given that people don't eat the same amount of bread each day anyway.

I'm curious how many people up and arms about this happily buy vitamin-fortified cereals? And wasn't "and folic acid for reproduction" a selling point once upon a time?

That was the ad campaign for Complan maybe 15-20 years ago.

Given that a lot of "nanny-state" measures like eco-bulbs had connections with global treaties such as NZFSA & Kyoto, I'm not the only one to foresee a brewing shitfight between "free-choice" nationalism and "nanny-state" internationalism. Especially if NZ finds itself at the receiving end of America's Waxman-Markey Act.

Stupid analogy time - because some people don't wear seat belts we should repeal the seat belt law??

Thank you for putting the science links in but I fear stupidity has already won this fight.

Yes you can get B9 from veges but it is somewhat dependent on the soils the plants are grown in. Unfortunately NZ soils aren't great for promoting B9 accumulation.

It's worth noting Canada and the US fortify flour - which means all flour products get B9 supplementation. A lot of the flour in NZ is made elsewhere which makes B9 supplementation at this point more difficult.

Note this is a public health issue and an economic issue. Children with neural defects cost a fortune to help live reasonable lives. It is cheaper by far to prevent them developing the disease than to treat it.

Oh and for the silly woman on breakfast TV complaining about eating "chemicals" - you are made of chemicals and everything you eat is chemical you ignorant .... angry moi?

Final cynical point - I wonder how many lunches My Key has had with the manufacturers of B9 pills that are at the moment sold to all pregnant and planning women. A public health initiative like this would cut into their profits something awful.

Health Nazis and Vitamin BenignThe human body was not meant to eat bread or cereals in general. We were eating lots of fat and fruit and veggies before agriculture came along and I was quite healthy back then.The whole food pyramid is a crock and the emphasis on cholesterol is just a way to sell more statins.And don't get me started on secondhand smoke, grrr.The United States Department of Agriculture wants you to eat more bread and cakes. Follow the money. Its all a load of Folics.

So why do you say this doesn't work? Canada and the US seem to have implemented (albeit at the flour level) a successful food supplement program that people seem to think has worked.

I'm not asserting that it doesn't work, I'm asking if it does or not, because it seems to be a matter of contention.

Actually, when I look back at my original post, I can see that I'm being emphatic there. That's clearly wrong. But I still ask the question I've been posing here: does it actually achieve its intended effect?

I wonder how many lunches My Key has had with the manufacturers of B9 pills that are at the moment sold to all pregnant and planning women. A public health initiative like this would cut into their profits something awful.

Not necessarily, you'd still need to supplement if you were planning a baby to get to the higher levels they recommend. It's just that fortifying bread would mean that there's a higher baseline population consumption, and therefore a better safety net, for people who were unaware they could benefit from this.

It interests me that in a world where you could probably get a majority of people to support a total ban on alcohol consumption among pregnant women, the instant that measures to improve babies' health could fall on the shoulders of everyone else, there's an uproar. Sure, this is a sophisticated version of the Helen Lovejoy doctrine, but it's one in which there is evidence of preventable physical harm, rather than an imagined moral one.

It interests me that in a world where you could probably get a majority of people to support a total ban on alcohol consumption among pregnant women, the instant that measures to improve babies' health could fall on the shoulders of everyone else, there's an uproar

If the analogy was the same you'd have to ban all alcohol consumption by everyone to stop pregnant women drinking.

It's not a precise analogy, Glenn, I won't insist on it. But there is a difference between how people treat freedom of choice for the general population and those responsible for the care of children. I know I do - I get annoyed enough with people exercising their freedom to made perverse choices in direct contradiction of medical evidence, but I get shoutingly angry when they do so on behalf of their kids.

Some being over at Kiwiblog that seems to have acquired literacy without humanity actually suggested that those women who didn't know that folate was good for their kids would be bad mothers anyway and didn't deserve the benefits of mandatory fortification. There's a gender element to the debate that's very obvious over there.

Sorry, I can't tell if John Key being wishy today or is it washy?His party signed up to the policy while in opposition. Didn't they realise that by signing up if they came to power they would have to implement it?Perhaps they were too used to other people having to take the consequences for decisions, it sure looks like it caught them by surprise.

Congrats to the PR bod who came up with "eleven slices", now a compulsory part of the catechism, like plasma TVs in prison and hip-hop tours. Not ten. Not twelve. Too even, too round. Eleven it is, and ever shall be

OT but related to this earlier comment...why did nobody in the media/opposition puff and pout about John Key's Pacific tour entourage, which included a hip-hop dance crew?

current poll question at Kiwiblog"Do you support the requirement for folic acid to be added to bread to reduce the risk of birth defects?"with a choice of voting 'yes' or 'no'last look saw 9% saying yes.

I can't help thinking that those Kiwiblog readers may be a bit "in-bread" themselves.